


Ring of Keys

by vast_difference



Category: Holby City
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/F, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 06:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8568055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vast_difference/pseuds/vast_difference
Summary: Bernie Wolfe is back from Kiev and back to work at Holby City Hospital, but how happy is Serena Campbell to see her almost-lover? Read on to find out! I can't put too much in the summary without giving away some "key" plot points. (See what I did there?)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. Playing in the sandbox, etc. etc.
> 
> "Ring of Keys" from the musical Fun Home
> 
> You didn't notice her at first but I saw her the moment she walked in  
> She was a delivery woman  
> She came in with a hand cart full of packages,  
> She was an old school butch.
> 
> Someone just came in the door.  
> Like no one I ever saw before.  
> I feel... I feel...
> 
> I don't know where you came from.  
> I wish I did. I feel so dumb.  
> I feel...
> 
> Your swagger and your bearing  
> and the just right clothes you're wearing  
> Your short hair and your dungarees  
> And your lace up boots.

Bernie Wolfe’s life could easily be called a roller coaster in the past couple of months. Hell… the whole past year if you wanted to get technical about it. She had traded the turmoil of the front lines in Afghanistan for domestic warfare back in Holby- the ill-fated attempt to salvage her marriage- and found comfort in the bustle of the hospital itself. Then… Serena. Then came her hasty exit to Kiev; and now that her secondment was over, it was back to Holby once again. Exhaustion pervaded Bernie’s very being as she took a brief second to rest her chin and hands on her office desk, staring at the conundrum before her. 

 

The common thread, the stitches that had both pieced Bernie back together again in Holby and then unwoven her simultaneously, lived in one person: Serena Campbell. Serena was the reason that Bernie didn’t run for the hills within two months of returning to civilian life. Serena made her laugh. And challenged her. And bloody infuriated her sometimes, but usually had her snorting wine right out her nose at Albie’s with a smirk and a wit dryer than a martini merely hours after their latest professional or personal sparring match. 

 

Serena made her stay. Serena made her run. Serena made her come back. One particularly worded text was all it had taken, and in all caps, to boot: “I MISS YOU.” Bernie had tied up all of her loose ends in Kiev and been on a plane to Heathrow within five days.

 

And now Bernie had been back. She’d returned to work at Holby City Hospital all of a week ago, as a matter of fact. Still had a desk in Serena’s office. Or… their office? Even after months of sharing it, Bernie never could quite decide whether the office really belonged to both of them or if Serena just deigned to allow her to have a desk in it. 

 

Either way, Bernie’s AAU co-lead hadn’t spoken more than a few sentences to her since her return from Kiev that weren’t strictly necessary to keep the ward running smoothly. Bernie had purposely been ambiguous with Hanssen about the exact date of her return, opting instead to give an approximation and make it official once she was physically back in the U.K. She told him that she would pop in to say hello once she was settled and begin taking shifts soon thereafter. Bernie had done some surreptitious reconnaissance via Raf in regards to Serena’s schedule to make sure that the other woman would indeed be on the ward when she came in and bribed him into secrecy with an I.O.U. for a pint at Albie’s. Or three. Whatever it took. 

 

It had been the previous Thursday. With absolutely no warning, Serena had come out of a patient’s room, her nose buried in a file as per usual, and had almost missed Bernie chatting up their coworkers at the nurses’ station. Of course, Bernie had not missed Serena, because that would be impossible, and Serena only got about five steps past her before she did the most adorable double take that Bernie was sure she had ever witnessed. There was a flash of about ten seconds where Serena’s guard dropped completely and Bernie was able to witness her unchecked reaction to the two of them seeing one another for the first time in so long.

 

Serena’s unprepared eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and nearly so did the file she was carrying. Bernie felt her heart clench. She wanted to run to her; she wanted to gather Serena Campbell in her arms, and kiss her over and over and over again, and never let her go again for as long as she lived. Bernie was sure that she probably looked just as lost as Serena, if not moreso. 

 

They had that small interval where time froze in the haze of that shared look; but then Bernie noticed the staff’s heads shifting back and forth between almost in unison like they were watching a tennis match, waiting for a reaction from one side or the other. So Bernie Wolfe just smiled the same small smile that she always smiled, one reserved for Serena Campbell alone when she couldn’t do or say all the things that she was really thinking about in her head.

 

Serena cleared her throat. “Ms. Wolfe,” she nearly gulped, but recovered well enough. “Are you just here for a visit, or will you once again be gracing Holby with your trauma expertise?”

 

“Yes, I’ll be coming back to work, Ms. Campbell. I haven’t stopped in to talk to Mr. Hanssen yet, but I’m prepared to start as soon as tomorrow if I’m needed.”

 

“Excellent,” Serena nodded with a tight smile. “We’ve missed your assistance greatly,” she said, and quickly added, “haven’t we, group?” It had to be clinical. Impersonal. The very antithesis of their goodbye. 

 

Amidst choruses of “yes” and “absolutely” and “thank God” from their colleagues, Serena gave one final nod, continued walking to her- their?- office, and closed the door with a finality that indicated she should not be followed. Bernie could see that her road back to Serena’s good graces wouldn’t be a smooth one; the self-professed grudge-holder didn’t currently seem in a very forgiving mood. And given the very public display of their very private business upon Bernie’s departure from AAU, Serena was likely to be all that more vigilant about saving face.

 

“Well, look at it this way,” Raf joked. “She didn’t throw anything at you, now did she?”

 

“No,” Bernie contemplated, “but I’d lay decent odds she at least considered it.”

 

“True.”

 

In fact, another Thursday had come and gone, and it was now Friday again. And with few exceptions, when Bernie was in the office, Serena was conveniently always somewhere else. While Bernie was certain that was intentional but, she was also equally certain that Serena’s resolve would break eventually and they would have a real conversation. There had been a few charged glances in passing, but nothing more. She wished Serena would shout at her, scream, cry, throw things… God knows she would deserve all of that and more for running the way she had… anything but this silent indifference. 

 

And then there was still the pivotal text, after all. Of course Serena hadn’t mentioned a word about it, but no matter how many times Bernie doubted its existence, it was still there every time she opened their running iMessage conversation. In all of the time Bernie had known Serena, she had never cleared their text message conversations from her iPhone. That had become a pastime in Kiev, reading through ten months worth of words and not always so subtle subtext.

 

Bernie had replayed every single one of their interactions from the last week in her head, the total of which didn’t take more than all of her fingers, and none of it added up to the puzzle currently sitting in front of her on her desk.

 

A key. There was an extra key on Bernie’s keyring. She didn’t have all that many keys to begin with, so the addition actually did stand out; her flat (silver), her car (black and silver), the old one from the house she had shared with Marcus (a fading bronze), and she had no idea why she was still hanging on to that one, since Marcus had almost certainly changed the locks since she had moved out. And then there were the four keys that opened various doors and cabinets on the ward (of various colors). That would normally leave a total of seven, but here it was: an eighth key. Silver, but brighter than the one for her flat... newer perhaps? And the one to her flat had a solid diamond-headed shape to it, while this key was one of those jobs that almost looked like a pentagon with holes through the top of it.

 

Bernie actually had two different key-chains hooked together; a battered army one that had seen three continents held her personal keys, while one like those sold in the hospital gift shop with the Holby logo held her ward keys. The wayward key had been placed with her personal ones. So the two rings were now balanced, four and four. Well. They would be the only thing in Bernie’s life currently balanced at the moment, then. 

 

Of course given their sparse interactions since Bernie’s return from Kiev, it seemed ludicrous that Serena would be the one to put forth the effort to plant a stealth key among her usual ones. But… what other individual currently in her sphere had any personal investment in her at all? Or that kind of access? Absolutely no one. Unless possibly Jason? She had talked to him a few times on the ward during the week; oddly enough for him though, he had asked a minimum of invasive questions on the subject of his aunt. So… but no, that was impossible. Jason couldn’t do stealthy if his very life depended on it.

 

So that was it, then. It seemed utterly implausible, but for reasons only known to her, Serena had given Bernie a key. Probably to her own home… if not, then to what else? It would be bloody well embarrassing if she happened to be wrong, but what did she have to lose at this point? Her pride? Bernie would happily give away every last proud cell in her body if it got Serena back into her orbit. And if it should just happen to get her back into Serena’s heart… and by extension into her bed… well. Then that would just be a bloody fairy tale ending, then wouldn’t it?

 

But Bernie didn’t want a fairy tale. She didn’t think that she had ever really believed in any of that nonsense to begin with. Any measure of comfort that Bernie had ever felt at any given time in her life always existed amidst a little bit of chaos. And if there was ever a way to describe the hurricane that was Serena Campbell’s presence in her life, that was it. Serena whirled her around and swept her away and tossed her to and fro. But in the eye of that storm, Serena also brought with her chaos a grounding presence that Bernie had scarcely felt in her life. Serena felt like home.

 

And being the weary traveler that she was, my God did Bernenice Griselda Wolfe just want to go home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to do my best to fit this into a 3-shot. I have a hard time writing short things, although the fics I have managed to finish have both been 30,000. I guess that depends on your definition of short! Due to work, motherhood and election stuff exhausting my creative spirit, I make no promises about when it'll be finished. But I have to say this fandom is THA BEST and y'all have given me life in the hell of the last couple of weeks. I'm jj-lockd (main blog) and the-other-side-of-vast (my "I love girls" sideblog) on tumblr. Hope to see you over there!
> 
> P.S.- I'm American. I tried my best to not sound ridiculous.


End file.
